Don't call me an Asian babe, Martin Bashir

An excitable Martin Bashir landed himself in trouble last week when he gave voice to the apparently sexist undertow of his inner world at a journalists' banquet in Chicago. It's not so much that he addressed the assembled women as "Asian babes" that so appals, or even that he did everything except demand that his co-host, Juju Chang, drop to her knees in front of him when he said a speech should "be like a dress on a beautiful woman - long enough to cover the important parts and short enough to keep your interest - like my colleague Juju's".

No, it was saying all this to the Asian American Journalists' Association that was hilarious and stupid enough to justify a gold in the Doofus Olympics.

Bashir also declared himself "happy the podium covers me from the waist down". Chang's impressively restrained response was, "See what I have to put up with?" Indeed we do, Juju.

Most guys keep this sort of thing to themselves, rather than blurt it out under a spotlight and into a microphone. "Gee," the fried meanderings must go, "I'll just whisper sweet nothings and get all these sweet, sexy Asians aroused and compliant just like in Patpong."

Asian women who aren't soft-spoken, submissive and permanently on heat seem to short-circuit many western males' brains. If you are tall, opinionated and transgressive they call you a ladyboy.

Among many things, I'm a babe to my nearest and dearest. And I'm Asian (in the US, "Asian" is shorthand for east Asian, unlike in the UK, where it is more likely to refer to someone from the Indian subcontinent). But put the two together and you've got a fistful of top-shelf porn. "Asian Babe" reeks low-life desperation born of economic disadvantage: not the best description of a hall full of high-powered media professionals. Certainly not of journalists from the east Asian ethnic minority who have had a gut full of fighting ultra-low status with ultra-high achievement.

Whatever I may enjoy in the privacy of my own home, no bloke with his hand on the patriarchal helm is going call me an "Asian babe" and live.